Pizza-crust Patent Fresh For Paulucci

October 23, 2000|By Dina Sanchez of The Sentinel Staff

Soggy, reheated pizza crust. How disgusting.

Ronald O. Bubar of Jackson, Ohio, has come up with a solution. He was recently issued a patent for his method of making a laminated pizza crust. Bubar's method involves creating a fatted dough by layering the uncooked dough with margarine, stretching it and repeating the process. When the dough is baked, frozen and then reheated, the result is a flakier, more flavorful product -- the perfect innovation for someone with a hand in the frozen-food industry.

Luigino's is only the most recent of Paulucci's successes. He struck gold with the canned-food company Chun King Corp. in the 1940s and later with Jeno's Inc., which made frozen snack foods. He eventually sold both.

In the 1960s, Paulucci started testing other waters, purchasing land in Lake Mary on either side of Interstate 4. By the 1980s he had started work on what is now the sprawling Heathrow residential community and business park.

Paulucci, 82, was unavailable last week to discuss the pizza crust patent. He is still involved with Luigino's, though, hopping from the Sanford headquarters to the production plant in Duluth, Minn. And the company says he still taste-tests his products to ensure they are what they say they are.